Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)

[Henry Gale]

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[Henry Gale]

I don't know what to say other than it's so perfect it hurts.

The sudden realization it was probably going to end 2-3 minutes before it did gutted me. (With the very thought of it even ending at any point having escaped my transfixed -- almost said "dazed"... -- mind in the moment.)

I could've watched it for a very, very long time. Makes me wish Linklater would delve into something like this for TV, to just let worlds like this exist lucidly in even more thorough pieces, for lengthier amounts of time. Indefinitely, even.

It's either going to hit you or it won't, but I can't even see a devil's advocate to critique it in my own mind it's so overwhelmed after seeing it. Like Dazed, it's not even showily profound or trying to make itself seem high-brow, it just knows the slice of life it is and paints everything in its parameters exhilaratingly well.

Holy shit am I in love with this.

[Pop Trash]

I liked it, but man did it test my bro-y patience. I realize this is by design since (similar to The Wolf of Wall Street) you can't quite tell if Linklater is in love with these guys or merely accurately observing their brotastic behavior. Unlike, The Wolf of Wall Street, these guys aren't exactly morally reprehensible, but I did feel like I was hanging out in a sports bar for two hours. This film also made me double down on my belief that "Freaks & Geeks" is one of the finest things ever put on television.

[Henry Gale]

I liked it, but man did it test my bro-y patience. I realize this is by design since (similar to The Wolf of Wall Street) you can't quite tell if Linklater is in love with these guys or merely accurately observing their brotastic behavior. Unlike, The Wolf of Wall Street, these guys aren't exactly morally reprehensible, but I did feel like I was hanging out in a sports bar for two hours.

I mean, I'm not sure if Linklater cares if you exactly sympathize with anyone other than Jenner's and Deutch's characters, since they're positioned as "the heart" of the film, are the only ones who seem to carry out the most overtly nuanced emotions, and sort of vocally dissect the social conventions they find themselves in. But.. I dunno, I still found even the most overtly dumb characters in it.. pretty endearing? At the very least I liked the characters Ernest James, Wyatt Russell and Temple Baker played quite a bit.

I just don't think because the film fully indulges and even celebrates their indulgences (in allocated screen-time, anyway) as much as it does, say, the well-worn songs on its soundtrack doesn't mean it's inherently an irresponsible thing, because anything else could have felt smugly disingenuous, especially in generally aligning itself with the spirit of Dazed and Confused and how Linklater treated his world there (care-free, consequence-less, brash, and somehow lovable for all of it). It doesn't feel like it's morally cleaning up or applying a ton hindsight to the time (the guys being called "faggots" by a group of girls early on doesn't feel like it's played for anything but to give a sense of the tone of the time through it's more regettably casual vocabulary). I thought the cycling music scenes the guys find themselves in and eventually embracing (even if it's initially just to get girls) was also a nice distillation of the transitional era of the time, arguably the beginning of a bigger cultural tide change away from the dominance of their sort of fratty male behaviour and rock & roll as the be-alls and end-alls of youthful influence in the '80s, showing the characters ponder a world bigger than theirs of baseball, drinking, sex, and weed in fairly hilarious ways.

It's also very possible I just find depictions like this of late '70s / early '80s bro-ish-ness significantly less icky and difficult than those of the 21st century-type. Maybe because I never had to live through it.

This film also made me double down on my belief that "Freaks & Geeks" is one of the finest things ever put on television.

Haha yup, my group brought up and agreed on this exactly point walking through the theatre lobby after the movie.

[Skitch]

Linklater has some sort of sorcery; even in films of his I downright cant stand I still end up referring to them in conversation because they have some unique something that merits at least one watch.

Edit: No I havent seen this film, but all I need to sell me on watching it is Linklaters name.

[amberlita]

It's also very possible I just find depictions like this of late '70s / early '80s bro-ish-ness significantly less icky and difficult than those of the 21st century-type. Maybe because I never had to live through it.

I don't think it's much different aside from clothes and soundtrack. At least not from my perspective living through it in the 00s. The male id behavior hasn't changed and for that reason I found this film incredibly icky. I've no doubt this was Linklater's college experience, in that sense it is a fair story to tell and probably an honest one that isn't meant for female viewers to love (Linklater has adoration for days for these guys but respects only one woman enough to bother giving her a name). But it depresses me to see men falling over themselves in love with this group of guys and their male bonding behavior while I watch nameless young women get eye-fucked and actual-fucked and preyed upon and it's all ok because that's just what guys do and girls appear to love it because the men are charming and flattering. Makes me remember how lucky I am to have gotten out of that period of my life intact and having met some guys who were decent and not trying to craft their future "glory days" reel.

[Spinal]

But it depresses me to see men falling over themselves in love with this group of guys and their male bonding behavior while I watch nameless young women get eye-fucked and actual-fucked and preyed upon and it's all ok because that's just what guys do and girls appear to love it because the men are charming and flattering.

I'm not going to try to convince you to like the movie, but what you describe was not my experience of watching the film. I think these guys are idiots and they're awful. I remember these guys from high school and they were not nice to me. But still, I like the film because it has a lot of authenticity and is able to find a lot of humor in the situation. Nostalgia is a complicated emotion. We look back and say, oh god, were people really like that? And yet there is also affection because we survived it and it informs who we are today. I won't try to read Linklater's mind, but, in my opinion, he offers the viewer plenty of opportunity to think critically about his characters' actions.

[Irish]

This was startlingly bad.

But first: I don't think Linklater intended for these guys to be laughed at. He's not that kind of writer. He doesn't do arch, he doesn't do irony. He always tries to be earnest as hell. (He also played baseball in college, and several moments feel lifted straight out of real life.) Second: The Wolf of Wall Street comparison strikes me as, uh, how to put this charitably? Weird? The characters in Wolf behave in a way that informs on them and the period in which they live,. There's an organizing principle to the movie, and by the end it's obvious Scorsese wanted to make a specific point. Wants Some lacks focus, and at no time does anybody do anything that tells you who they are in a way that distinguishes them from any rando on the street.

Other thoughts:

It's okay to do something episodic and plotless, but not formless. This movie features a dozen interchangeable characters in a story that never matters-- not to the characters, and not to the audience. It's a mild and pointless tour of late 70s subcultures, except it has nothing to say about any of them. I mean, FFS, there's a dozen ballplayers in the movie and none of them even talk about baseball (even though they say they do).

I almost admired Linklater's chuzpah as he purposely drew insane comparisons to movies like American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Breaking Away, Animal House, etc. (Like, wow, dude, your writing isn't any good so what in God's name would possess you to remind me of better movies.)

I usually like the way Linklater takes an almost documentarian approach to his fictions, but here he apparently believes that college boys wanting to get drunk and laid is some sort of insight---which needs to be repeated in scene after scene after scene. These characters aren't even interested in each other (I was taken aback that two full scenes go by before anybody bothers to ask what happened to Willoughby).

The most inept part were the title cards dutifully announcing the start of classes. What was the point of that? Nobody in the movie gave a shit about school. They barely acknowledge that they're in college, except as a means to haze younger characters. So why is the audience supposed to care? The title cards were meaningless, a half-assed attempt to employ some form of structure to an otherwise formless script. (You could, I think, literally place every scene in a random order and it would make no difference.)

But it depresses me to see men falling over themselves in love with this group of guys and their male bonding behavior while I watch nameless young women get eye-fucked and actual-fucked and preyed upon and it's all ok because that's just what guys do and girls appear to love it because the men are charming and flattering.

I burst out laughing once I noticed that not a single female character wears a bra in any scene during this movie. I'd ordinarily be tempted to defend some of the choices here -- "boys will be boys" and all that bullshit, and I don't have a problem with singular points of view -- but there's also a line where a movie can take on the attitudes of its characters, and this whole film reeks of a certain disdain.

[Melville]

I almost admired Linklater's chuzpah as he purposely drew insane comparisons to movies like American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Breaking Away, Animal House, etc. (Like, wow, dude, your writing isn't any good so what in God's name would possess you to remind me of better movies.)

Completely agree that this felt aimless, and the characters unlikeable, in an uninteresting way. But as far as celebrating repulsive behavior goes, Animal House is much worse. I don't get the love for that movie.

[Mal]

I loved every minute of this movie.

[transmogrifier]

It's the movie I'm most looking forward to ATM.

[TGM]

So yeah, the first half of this film was really testing my patience, and I had just about had enough with following this collection of douchebag characters for so long. However, right around the time when the dude hangs the flowers on the door is when this movie finally started to click with me, and from that point on I actually found myself really digging the vibe of the film. Took a while to get there, but this one ended up just winning me over. So a mild yay from me.

[Spinal]

Funny, these characters don't bother me as entertainment, although they would certainly annoy me in real life. I am much more irritated by the characters in the Before ... series of films. I think it's because these guys are made to be laughed at, whereas it always strikes me that the Hawke-Delpy characters are intended to be profound somehow.

[transmogrifier]

Funny, these characters don't bother me as entertainment, although they would certainly annoy me in real life. I am much more irritated by the characters in the Before ... series of films. I think it's because these guys are made to be laughed at, whereas it always strikes me that the Hawke-Delpy characters are intended to be profound somehow.

I'm irritated by your irritation. The Before films are beyond reproach, you unfeeling automaton! (Well, especially the last two are. Well, especially, especially the middle one)

[baby doll]

It's only Linklater's fourth best movie this decade but that's still pretty good. Certainly enjoyable, but no one here jumps out as being a potential future star like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

Incidentally, everybody in the cast sort of looks like someone famous: the main dude kinda looks like a young Matt Dillon, and then there's Amish Matthew Modine, buff angry Don McKellar, and the dude with a teen stache who looks eerily like a transitioning Scarlett Johansson.

Also, I'm cool with all the dudes looking like they're in their 30s since it makes all the more surprising when [spoiler omitted].

[ledfloyd]

I don't know that you're supposed to laugh at these guys, with the exception of that guy from Detroit. I spent the first 15-20 minutes thinking I was going to hate the movie — because it was so overtly bro-y — but I quickly saw the humanity in them, and really grew to enjoy it. Great film.

[DavidSeven]

Yes, this movie is surprising. Linklater once again proving that, when it comes to slice-of-life, he has the magic touch. While not near his outright best, this may be his most impressive slight of hand. He's never worked with less compelling raw material. The premise is as initially off-putting as it sounds on paper. It's almost as if he dared himself to create something interesting out of characters who would be the most alienating to his Before base. Yet somewhere early in the film, it envelopes you. Like Boyhood, Dazed and other works, it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. They are not perfectly crafted pieces, nor perfectly acted. Nothing is particularly dramatic. The films just feel lived in, and the experience is like being in the room. I see this later becoming recognized as a hidden gem in an already impressive--if somewhat mystifying--oeuvre.

[dreamdead]

Not quite as captivated by this one as others were. There were two films here. The college relationship film (where Linklater tries to avoid duplicating too much of the Before... series and finale of Boyhood). However, that male/female relationship, and the ease with which these two characters slip in and out of gendered roles for something more transgressively themselves, is the clear winner of the film.

More typical, and thus less interesting, were the interactions between the men when they weren't engaging with women. It still had some Linklater rhythms and digressions but it was also more profoundly banal. There were a couple interesting peaks -- the 30-year-old masquerading as a late-teen -- but the humaneness of the characters was countered by how uninterested I was in their affairs.

The mildest of yays, or the politest of nays.

[Mysterious Dude]

I can't tell how Richard Linklater feels about hazing.

[Ezee E]

This reminds me of Undeclared a lot.

I'm about a half hour into it (was watching on the plane) and will definitely finish. More thoughts to come.

[Spinal]

The knowledge that the audience has is that these guys will never be this popular again for the rest of their lives. Their looks will go and they'll just be sad, adult assholes. That, to me, is what underlies the whole movie.

[Irish]

OK, here is the key disagreement, I think. This, to me, is not weird. This is, rather, the point of the movie.

It's weird in the sense that it goes beyond cliquish to being cultish. The way these boys are presented, it's like they're under house arrest (who spends all day inside playing ping pong during the last days of summer? In Texas?).

I agree with you in one sense, but I also think you're being generous. The elements you cite definitely exist, but they are underdeveloped because the characters are underwritten. Nobody in this film has any detail around them that would make them into an individual. (I understand you interpret that as part of the point.) Jenner, for his part, acts a little more human because he's a little more friendly. I don't think that's a big, deep, abiding theme. For every time Jenner smiles at a stranger and is outgoing, there's a half dozen other instances where he tags along silently with the group, or capitulates with whatever they're doing.

There are so many ways Linklater could have done what you suggest, and done it better, and in a way that would have made his world more three dimensional.

The knowledge that the audience has is that these guys will never be this popular again for the rest of their lives. Their looks will go and they'll just be sad, adult assholes. That, to me, is what underlies the whole movie.

I gotta break with you there. That's all in your head. There is literally nothing in the movie that suggests this outcome.

[Peng]

I gotta break with you there. That's all in your head. There is literally nothing in the movie that suggests this outcome.

I mean, if that character who already graduated years ago but still disguised as fellow student had said out loud while being kicked out "Many of you will be sad as adults like me some day!", we would be accusing Linklater as a bit overly blunt.

[Spinal]

I gotta break with you there. That's all in your head. There is literally nothing in the movie that suggests this outcome.

As Peng rightly noted, I didn't mean to suggest that it's actually in the movie. I guess I'm just saying that there is an inherent comedy in the bravado of the young, and that by setting the film in an era with absurd hairstyles and fashion, Linklater is underscoring that idea.

[Ezee E]

A very enjoyable first hour that kind of runs its course and gets a little old in the final half. Isn't that the college experience in a nutshell too?

The debate on this thread, I'm not really sure how to look at it. It's kind of just one big fantasy/dream anyway, considering the baseball teams don't typically start practicing until January, and this movie is in August/September time. There's little to no consequences and the actual school side is almost completely ignored on all ends. The goal is basically to either make friends laugh or get some if the chance presents itself. Enjoy the times I guess? I think that's why I kind of got bored in the second half of the movie.

In the end, when someone manages to get to know a character beyond a hookup at a party, it is well-respected in a jabbing way at least.

I don't think I can recall anybody's names, just point out what they look like. Kind of like what a college party was like.